Among The Chosen (ATC) is a planned seven book graphic novel cycle written, modeled, rendered, penciled, inked, shaded and lettered by Daniel H. ATC is — superficially — the story of the seven magicians who, at some point in the distant past, all but destroyed the human race. At least that is what the about page indicates. So far the story has detailed a small skirmish in the larger cold war between the Mega Corp. Heirotus and its paramilitary nemesis, the Templar. That's ATC "proper" — the color pages, The Dualist and Transitional Voices. Dead City Radio, the black and white bits, seem to be about a disaffected, sometimes delusional, college student attending an unnamed art school in 1997.

Updates are more irregular than anything this side of Dresden Codak. Of course, this is because the author never tried to keep a schedule until May of 2013, and has acknowledged that the effort required for the creation of CG assets means that the odds of a regular update schedule are unlikely at best. When he does update, he may post one to several dozen pages. In addition, the author has a habit of going back and revising his work. The Dualist, for instance, has been through two major revisions. The authors reasons for this are many and varied - and fairly well documented.

The comic is very cryptic, often assuming the Viewers Are Geniuses because it's all in the liner notes. The military jargon, complex backstory and work in progress nature of the piece make understanding ATC akin to assembling a puzzle, but that's half the fun. The art work is very polished and the integration of 2D and 3D assets is well done.

Drugs Are Good: Hardcore stimulants are used often and explicitly. It is implied that the Addicaine commanders have the option of using heavy duty combat drugs to bring their troops up to battle ready status.

Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Earth is in the middle of a sinkhole that makes FTL navigation extremely difficult - being in the middle of a Hazard To Navigation, the rest of the galaxy is unaware of Earth.

Except it's really not so insignificant, as it's the origin point of the human species. Metahumanity in the larger universe is the distant cousin of Earth-humanity, after having been sucked off-planet some thirty thousand years ago by Neglectful Precursors and dumped on a variety of planets. They may have genetic engineering and FTL travel, but they're known as the "Human Diaspora" for a reason. This is probably incredibly interesting and important news, but it's being kept under wraps from both Earth-humanity and metahumanity - by whom, and for what reasons, is currently unknown.

Little Bit Beastly / Furry Comic: Some of the characters are human/bovine or human/goat hybrids. The author handwaves this as "metahumanity" and has at times argued that if characters such as Grij and Shannon are "furries," then Spock is a rabbit and Worf is a lobster.

Magitek: Science and magic are heavily integrated. For instance, FTL relies on "ambient energy" and much of the plot revolves around attempts to harness the power of supernatural beings for scientific study.

Reincarnation: One of the Crazy-Prepared paramilitary forces even has protocols for if an agent somehow remembers working with them in a previous life. This actually happens once and is implied to happen more.

Restraining Bolt: Implied that the Addicaines have these (Addicaine N-6, specifically, is heavily medicated as a means of suppressing his telekinetic abilities).

Revision: The author sometimes revisits and does a new edition of a comic. Historically, this has been used as a justification for ret-conning CG elements, rewriting the story (but not the plot), and reformatting to improve pacing. The biggest revision took place over 2008-2009, in which The Dualist was completely rewritten and reformatted from 3:4 to 6:9.

Sophisticated as Hell: Characters often go from highly technical mil-speak to vagina jokes and back in the same sentence.

Subspace Ansible: The Quantum Analogue Relay (QAR). One-of-a-kind prototype, carried by the Sabrosa, which is itself a one-of-a-kind prototype.

Super-Deformed: Used when characters are under the influence or very startled, mainly in the first half of The Dualist. Use of this technique has been phased out due to persistent (and well-reasoned) criticism from the author's (at the time) roommates.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy